Be polite to the customer service people, seriously. - General

I called dell cos i overclocked too much and my one of my vid cards broke (i have sli) i called said i dont no whats wrong but im artefacting and indian technician came round and replaced the broken one Now thats customer service ;)

actually that's not knowing how to overclock. and please don't use smilies.

I never called a customer service.

[QUOTE=Mr.Dounut;28902549]Being polite to customer service will let them be more inclined to bend the rules for you. Got tons of free stuff from Sprint from doing this.[/QUOTE] This. Being a little polite - even simple things like saying hello and thank you and just not being a douche - will mean I'll remember it for now and possibly later (I'll even write it down sometimes) and I'll work on your problem as early as I can. Usually within the hour. I might even do a little extra - call you back to update you or note down less time than I actually worked on your case and safe you money. If you're a dick you can be sure I'll do yours AFTER I work on some other people's problems that [i]I[/I] deem more important. A little bit goes a long way.

If I'm calling and they're helpful, I'm thankful. If they call me for [b]no fucking reason at all[/b] and spam the fucking phoneline with their shit I will be rude and hang up.

At the same time though customer support at times acts like the customer is a inconvenience and just to get a basic fucking answer is like pulling teeth. I only contact support as a last resort, simply because half of the time customer support reps don't know shit or forward you back and forth to different departments. I find it more productive to look up the problem and fix it myself and never have to deal with customer support.

Xbox Support has always been fantastic for me. When I got the red ring way back in the day, it took less than a week to ship it out, get it repaired/replaced, and ship it back to me, WITH a free month of Xbox Live.

I have spent two months working at customer service. Talking with fucking corporate assholes was terrible.

I had to call Customer Support just once in my short life. And I think I made the guys day because he sounded tired and annoyed. I needed a quick hand in Windows Server 2008 (I think) because I forgot how to change the login password. After he helped me out by calling a buddy of his, I told him I felt like a retarded cockbag, he laughed quite a lot, I thanked him and went on my merry way.

I once got angry and I feel kinda bad about it. Fucking Acer :(

[QUOTE=haloguy234;28900597]After an average, long day of school you come home and decide to go play your favorite console. [i]Oh no! It's broken![/i] What do you do? Bitch and moan about how you have to call up the totally useless customer support and wade through numerous waiting periods all to be put through to some non-English speaking male or female who you have to constantly ask to repeat what they say to you because you can not understand a single fucking thing they say. In the process of explaining your issue to this person you probably decide to take out some of your pent up anger on them in the form of sighs, grunts, and muffled curse words. After ten minutes and seemingly constant requests for them to repeat what they said to you, you hang up the phone in a fit of relief and anger because the hardest part of the process of fixing your system is over with. Now let's take a look at what that customer support person's day is like. He or she is dealing with assholes like you every day. They probably work full time, too. For eight hours, they have to put up with snooty shits like yourself. You didn't even say thank you to them. I mean, why would you? It [i]is[/i] their job, after all. Why do they deserve a thank you anyway? They didn't even do their job that well at all? Well, probably because they've been talking to dicks and douchebags all day. Next time you find yourself in a situation where you have to contact customer support, [i]for the love of everything you cherish in your life, FUCKING THANK THEM FOR THEIR TIME AS SINCERELY AND POLITELY AS YOU CAN.[/i] A simple "thank you" can totally change how a person feels for the rest of the day. Who knows, you may even save some poor sod from killing himself. Seriously, put yourself in their shoes. Would you like talking to assholes all day? No. You wouldn't.[/QUOTE] I'm always polite to customers service unless they are going out of their way to give me the run around and not get my problem fixed, which is what they are GODDAMN PAYED TO DO HALF THE TIME. Also, call me "racist" all you want, but I HATE the fact that my call is rerouted out of the country to someone with a extremely thick accent and a fake american sounding name. Those are jobs taken from americans/europeans and outsourced to asian/african countries to save the company a few cents despite being a giant inconvenience for their customers and EXACTLY THE GODDAMN PROBLEM WITH AMERICA'S ECONOMY!

[QUOTE=Mr.Dounut;28902549]Being polite to customer service will let them be more inclined to bend the rules for you. Got tons of free stuff from Sprint from doing this.[/QUOTE] This. When my (£1100) laptop broke last year, I got rather angry with the indian man I was talking to from customer support. When I realised I was losing my temper, I apologised to him and he got me a free on-site repair.

[QUOTE=JustExtreme;28902739]I have Virgin Cable and one day, for some reason, the ethernet ports on the provided router (which has the modem integrated) just stopped working and the wi-fi reset itself to a congested channel that was impossible to connect to (large flat complex). I call Virgin up to try get assistance and get through to wherever their call centre is located and I explain the problem as best I can and I get told that it is important that I clear my browser cookies and untick work offline because otherwise "not connect", they also go on to ask obscure questions regarding wireless when I have already explained that I am connected via cat5 ethernet which they don't appear to understand - I comply with all their obscure instructions just to satisfy them and they never once ask what the router is doing despite my explaining to them beforehand. I give up, thank them for their wonderful assistance in a sarcastic tone that they probably did not detect, and leave it 2-3 days and voila the ethernet ports magically start working again. Must have been a borked firmware upgrade rollout... Either way, next time anything goes wrong - I'm sure gonna clear my fucking cookies.[/QUOTE] If you phone virgin media and get through to someone offshore save yourself the effort, hang up, try again later. Repeat until you get through to someone in the UK. About 50% of the calls I took in that job at some point the person complained about the incompetence of the last 4 people they spoke to (were always agents from Pune), and more often than not the solution was really simple stuff like reseting browser to default settings. [editline]31st March 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Synelor;28911321]Listening to whiny little bitches is their job, they chose it.[/QUOTE] It's something that comes with the job, granted, but it's not something you sign on the dotted line for. Despite 4 weeks training for my job, none of it was on how to deal with irate customers, the only training you get for that comes in the form of specialised workshops you find out about through word of mouth which you have to sign up to get involved in and don't run very often.

Why does tech support even exist when we can just google any problem we might have?

Customer service people who are capable of solving my problems I am nice to. Like when my guitar hero instruments malfunction within their warranty, I always remain patient on the phone. And when I've had to deal with Apple they have been nice. But phone service people are a different story, I expect people to know stuff about their jobs actually.

Once I had to phone up T-Mobile support or something, I went through like 3 guys who sent me to various different departments and all that shit. Then I got this guy who knew exactly what I was talking about and could do everything I wanted himself. I made sure to thank him lotsies.

[QUOTE=JustExtreme;28902739]I have Virgin Cable and one day, for some reason, the ethernet ports on the provided router (which has the modem integrated) just stopped working and the wi-fi reset itself to a congested channel that was impossible to connect to (large flat complex). I call Virgin up to try get assistance and get through to wherever their call centre is located and I explain the problem as best I can and I get told that it is important that I clear my browser cookies and untick work offline because otherwise "not connect", they also go on to ask obscure questions regarding wireless when I have already explained that I am connected via cat5 ethernet which they don't appear to understand - I comply with all their obscure instructions just to satisfy them and they never once ask what the router is doing despite my explaining to them beforehand. I give up, thank them for their wonderful assistance in a sarcastic tone that they probably did not detect, and leave it 2-3 days and voila the ethernet ports magically start working again. Must have been a borked firmware upgrade rollout... Either way, next time anything goes wrong - I'm sure gonna clear my fucking cookies.[/QUOTE] I had that with BT. We use one of their Homehubs, and it periodically shuts down and reboots with no warning. When I called them about it they went through standard procedure ("are you sure it's plugged in, is your browser online?" that kind of stuff). I didn't get overly mad at them, as I know that Level 1 tech support has to do this, probably the only useful thing i learnt in my technical support module at college. But it just gets so annoying when you can describe the problem accurately, but they will not listen as they are following procedure, and thanks to shoddy outsourcing, in broken English where they don't seem to understand certain terms properly. They refuse to escalate your call to level 2 support for some reason until they have gone through every step of procedure they damn well can. I don't have time for that most times.

[QUOTE=Unusually Usual;28900822]I prefer customer service personal to be from the same nationality before I start being nice.[/QUOTE] Racist!

I remember when FP trolled lynksys indian customer service reps, everyone asking for the online help was trolling and 1 of the lynksys customer services guys had a breakdown saying he hates his job and started cussing

If I can't understand them or they can't understand me of course I'm going to get frustrated. Especially if I'm calling to end an account and they're telling me I can't. It's like they think I signed my soul away to be a part of their service. I once had to end my account with Bell and the person was telling me I had to pay the bills for the next month aswell even though the month hadn't started yet. I got so pissed I eventually said fuck it, close my account now, send me the bill and we're done. They shut everything off so when that month came along nothing was used. Still costed me 20 bucks :/ [editline]31st March 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=LieutenantLeo;28918123]Racist![/QUOTE] You don't call Tech Support often do you?

I am always polite even if they are in the end useless - it's not really their fault. I blame whatever company it is for out sourcing. I dislike being horrible to people and being polite/calm is much more productive then being an asshole to them.

I came in here expecting to read a story about how someone got their comeuppance for being abusive to a customer service number down the phonelines. What I read was actually much nicer.

[QUOTE=hexpunK;28917776]I had that with BT. We use one of their Homehubs, and it periodically shuts down and reboots with no warning. When I called them about it they went through standard procedure ("are you sure it's plugged in, is your browser online?" that kind of stuff). I didn't get overly mad at them, as I know that Level 1 tech support has to do this, probably the only useful thing i learnt in my technical support module at college. But it just gets so annoying when you can describe the problem accurately, but they will not listen as they are following procedure, and thanks to shoddy outsourcing, in broken English where they don't seem to understand certain terms properly. They refuse to escalate your call to level 2 support for some reason until they have gone through every step of procedure they damn well can. I don't have time for that most times.[/QUOTE] Yeah my mum had one of those and it kept doing that especially when lots of connections were being made i.e. torrenting when I lived back at home, we just replaced it rather than endure the PAIN. It was one of the 1st gen ones though so maybe they're better now... Problem with Virgin Cable is that if you get a new router you have to register it with them so it lets it connect and I have no idea how - with ADSL routers you just put your username and password in if applicable and thats it. Outsourcing would be fine if they employed people who knew what they were talking about but I guess thats why they do it - they don't have to train them properly since they just need to have basic reading skills.

In all honesty, despite the fact that customer service gets a bad rap, it's actually a very taxing job. Be a customer services associate for one day and see how you like it.

i always say please n thankyou muh fucka its just how i was raised and i feel weird if i dont say please or thankyou

I'm a garbage man... have you ever thanked a garbage man? So if you think they deserve to be thanked for doing there job you can think again. i pick up people like that's trash every day. Thank your garbage man the next time you see him.

My dad is in customer support, but it's for a really complex data processing system that only fortune 500 companies has, so he's talking to very smart professionals.

I am usually polite when they show the same politeness to me. The only thing that gets me upset is when they treat me like garbage because they had a bad day or they are busy. I usually never get pissed pissed for nothing.

School is talking to assholes all day...

i'm in tech support. People always call about their problems opening excel. WHERES THE ICON? WHY IS IT NOT IN THE DESKTOP? Hey dumbfuck maybe take a look in your folders..